Tennessee Pass

The bronze's last line still lies across this pass as steel. The Denver and Rio Grande laid narrow gauge over Tennessee Pass in 1881, racing a rival for Aspen, then bored a tunnel about two hundred feet below the summit in 1890 and widened the line to standard gauge. It was long the highest main line in the country. Union Pacific, which took it over with the Southern Pacific, preferred the Moffat Tunnel and ran its last revenue train over the pass on August 23, 1997. The track lies there, unused. The fork was named for prospectors' home state.

What the plaque says

This memorial is the property of the State of Colorado Tennessee Pass Across Continental Divide between Arkansas and Eagle Rivers Altitude 10,424 feet Named from Tennessee Fork of the Arkansas Explored by Fremont and Kit Carson 1845 Railroad constructed 1881 Erected by The State Historical Society of Colorado from The Mrs. J. N. Hall Foundation and by the State Highway Department and the U. S. Forest Service 1929

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• South Park City Museum — 19 mi
  A mining town assembled in the 1950s from buildings hauled out of South Park's dying camps, by a Colorado Springs lawyer who wanted no imitation town.
• Independence Pass — 22 mi
  Crossed by prospectors on the Fourth of July 1879, opened as a toll road for the Aspen rush in 1881, and shut by snow half of every year since.

More markers nearby

• Healy House — 7.7 mi